Unintended institutionalization: how the politics of symbolic fiscal practices shapes economic policy

Abstract Sociologists and political economists frequently study the politics of economic ideas, but the official statistics that enable decision-making and shape public debate have been less scrutinized. This article theorizes symbolic fiscal practices—the conceptual and accounting conventions, procedures, techniques and devices underlying official budgetary information—as the object and means of different framing contests. To demonstrate the analytical value of this perspective, the article studies why and how the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR) became the headline fiscal indicator of the UK in the 1970s. It argues the PSBR is a case of unintended institutionalization driven by the interplay between bureaucratic and economic-policy framing contests. Budgetary conventions, tables, labels and numbers are political objects. Their production, uses and understandings are neither pure reflections of economic-policy framing contests nor the sole result of bureaucratic framing contests. The politics of symbolic fiscal practices may thus influence economic policy in unexpected ways.